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William Dickey (poet)
William Hobart Dickey (December 15, 1928 - May 3, 1994) was an American poet and academic. He authored 15 books of poetry over a career that spanned 35 years. Life Youth and education Dickey was born in 1928 in Bellingham, Washington and was raised in Washington and Oregon. He attended Reed College, graduating in 1951. At Reed he wrote a novel for his bachelor's thesis and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and went on to study at Harvard University (M.A., 1955) and the University of Iowa (M.F.A., 1956). As a Fulbright scholar he studied at Jesus College at the University of Oxford from 1959 to 1960. Dickey was a student of John Berryman at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He later recalled: }} Career Dickey was an instructor in English at Cornell University from 1956 to 1959, and an assistant professor of English at Denison University from 1960 to 1962. In 1962 he joined the faculty of San Francisco State University as a professor of English and creative writing, teaching there until his retirement in 1991. Private life Dickey lived in San Francisco with his companion Leonard Sanazaro, a poet who taught English and creative writing at the City College of San Francisco. Dickey died in 1994 at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco. The cause was complications from HIV-related surgeries. Shortly before his death, Dickey finished a poem, "The Death of John Berryman," about the suicide of his former teacher. It was published posthumously in Poetry (January 1996) and The Best American Poetry 1997. Recognition Dickey's debut collection of poetry, Of the Festivity, was selected by W.H. Auden as the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1959. In the foreword to the book, Auden wrote: :It is possible to show evidence of great intelligence and sensibility but to be lacking in the first power essential to poetry, the power to speak, Mr. Dickey's lines have both. Among Dickey's subsequent collections of poetry, More Under Saturn won a silver medal from the Commonwealth Club of California in 1972, and The Rainbow Grocery received the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press in 1978. In 1996 a collection of Dickey's poems and books was deposited at the Gay and Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library. Publications Poetry *''Of the Festivity'' (with foreword by W.H. Auden). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959; New York: AMS Press, 1971. *''Interpreter's House''. Ohio State University Press, 1963. *''Rivers of the Pacific Northwest'' (long poem). Twowindows Press, 1969. *''More under Saturn''. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971. *''Sheena'' (illustrated by Paul Funge). Gorey, Ireland: Funge Art Centre, 1975. *''The Rainbow Grocery''. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978. *''The Sacrifice Consenting''. Pterodactyl Press, 1981. *''Six Philosophical Songs''. Pterodactyl Press, 1983. *''Joy''. Pterodactyl Press, 1983. *''Brief Lives''. Heyeck Press, 1985. *''The King of the Golden River''. Pterodactyl Press, 1985. *''In the Dreaming: Selected poems''. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1994. *''The Education of Desire''. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1996. Other * Carrion House: World of Gifts (satire on mail-order catalogues; with Adrianne Marcus & Wayne Johnson). New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. Anthologized * Poet's Choice (edited by Paul Engle & Joseph Langland). Dial, 1962. * Erotic Poetry (edited by William Cole). New York: Random House, 1963. *''The Contemporary Poet as Artist and Critic: Eight symposia'' (edited by Anthony Ostroff). Little, Brown, 1964. * The Best American Poetry 1996 (edited by David Lehman & Adrienne Rich). New York: Scribner, 1996. * The Best American Poetry 1997 (edited by David Lehman & [[James Tate). New York: Scribner, 1997. ("The Death of John Berryman") Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.William H. Dickey 1928-1994, Poetry Foundation, Web, Sep. 3, 2012. Audio / video *''The Fish Upstairs'' (audiocassette). The Watershed Foundation, 1985. * Dickey also experimented with Hypercard poetry, which is available at the Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities (Mechanisms: new media and the forensic imagination By Matthew G. Kirschenbaum) See also *List of U.S. poets References External links ;Poems *"Therefore" * William H. Dickey 1928 - 1994 at the Poetry Foundation ;Books *William Dickey at Amazon.com * William Dickey, Poems, 1981-1995, San Francisco Public Library ;About *"William Dickey, Poet and Teacher, Is Dead at 65" obituary at the New York Times Category:1928 births Category:1994 deaths Category:AIDS-related deaths in California Category:Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Category:American poets Category:Cornell University faculty Category:Denison University faculty Category:Fulbright Scholars Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:People from Bellingham, Washington Category:Reed College alumni Category:San Francisco State University faculty Category:20th-century poets Category:American academics Category:English-language poets Category:Poets